Blacktop Dreams - curated screening for the 14th Brisbane International Film Festival. 14 films selected for screening.

Blacktop Dreams, 2005 - Curated screening. The research field is film history and curatorial practice. The research was commissioned following the publication of an essay in Autopia: Cars and Culture in 2003 and a co-edited volume Lost Highways: A History of the Road Movie, 2000. Blacktop Dreams is an invited programme of curated screenings for the 14th Brisbane International Film Festival with accompanying Australian Film, Television and Radio School’s Lecture on the genre of ‘road movies’. The programme of influential ‘road movies’ was selected to show the breadth and diversity of the genre but also the presence of reoccurring visual tropes such as the need to escape, the possibility of a new future beyond the curve of the horizon, the romance of the long distance road trip, the clash of cars in competition with each other. The ‘road movie’, though closely associated with the USA also has its counterparts in Europe and Australia. Fourteen films were selected and introduced by the researcher. They included very well known examples such as Monte Hellman’s Two-Lane Blacktop and Terrence Malick’s Badlands, to films not necessarily categorised as ‘road movies’ by film history but which have many characteristics of the genre including D. A. Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back and Andrew Kötting’s Gallivant. The programme was also shown at the Chauvel Cinema in Sydney, 27th – 29th January 2007 with an accompanying AFTRS lecture at the Cinematheque in January 2007. The researcher was interviewed by SX on 18th January 2007 on the subject of ‘road movies’ and the closure of independent cinemas such as the Chauvel.